environment

Last month, in Mauritania, I stopped by a village just north of the Senegal river. As we drank tea under a patchy old tent, an old man pointed to the surrounding savannah – grassland with the odd acacia tree.

Q: As the new Director for the Energy and Extractives Global Practice at the World Bank, can you tell us about the greatest challenges you face in Extractives?

A: Extractive industries are complex and often risky, but when managed well they can foster transformative development in those countries that most need it. Extractives play a dominant role in 81 countries whose economies together account for a quarter of world GDP. These 81 countries also represent half of the world’s population and nearly 70 percent of those in extreme poverty. Given the need of these countries, a focus on natural resource management is important, but we must work diligently to mitigate the risks and improve governance structures so that the wealth generated from these activities benefits the poor. Similarly, a cornerstone of all the work we do is to mitigate the social and environmental impacts of extractives projects so that they benefit neighboring communities as well as broader economic growth. We also look forward to strengthening our work to improve governance of the extractive industries through efforts like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and minimizing the environmental footprint of projects by reducing routine gas flaring (Global Gas Flaring Reduction, GGFR).

Delivering food and nutrition security in the face of climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our generation. So it’s encouraging to see influential stakeholders around the world taking action today at the Climate Summit. From the private sector’s efforts to put a price on carbon, to the energy sector’s focus on lowering emissions, key stakeholders are realizing that inaction is not an option.

But one sector has yet to get its act together. Climate action may be gaining momentum, but the agriculture sector is largely stuck in ‘business as usual’ mode. Unlike other areas of the economy, it hasn’t made any big, transformational moves towards climate resilience or reducing emissions. We are missing our “electric car”.

Christy Clark is the premier of British Columbia, which has had a revenue-neutral carbon tax since 2008. She spoke ahead of the UN Secretary-General's Climate Leadership Summit about the impact of carbon pricing on the economy.

A few weeks ago, the working group tasked with drafting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) issued its official list of recommended goals and targets for consideration by the UN General Assembly in September. It is an extraordinary milestone: As far as I know, it is the first time that metrics are defined through a robust intergovernmental process. The Millennium Development Goals, which will expire next year, were the result of a very different process. The international community is showing a growing appetite for setting targets and tracking results to ensure concrete action on the ground.

While the ultimate outcome of the SDG process is still uncertain, sharpening our collective focus on results is good news for the sustainability of our planet and for creating the conditions not only for pulling people out of poverty, but for enabling rich, productive lives. It is a cliché, but it is true: what gets measured, matters.

Over the last 15 years, the amount of money spent on pets in the U.S. jumped from $17 billion to $43 billion annually. Birding is catching on in popularity globally.Clearly people love their animals -and not just their pets either. Perhaps this is why biodiversity conservation has attracted so many advocates and so much attention around the world. Newspapers routinely report on the discovery of new species and the demise of others. Nature as theater, both gripping and grizzly, is wildly popular when captured on film.

And yet, conservation biology, the interdisciplinary pursuit of saving wild species and wilderness, is at best marginal in the public policy sphere, particularly in development circles. Often, so too is environment more broadly. In this marketplace of ideas, conservation is certainly not king. Though it should be.

“Accounting” may not be a word that gets many pulses racing. But what if I told you that a new kind of accounting — called natural capital accounting — could revolutionize the way the world’s nations assess and value their economies?

Currently, gross domestic product (GDP) is the most widely used indicator of a country’s economic status. But while this number places a value on all the goods and services produced by that economy, it doesn’t account for its “natural capital” — the ecosystems and the services they provide, from carbon sequestration to freshwater regulation to pollination.

China’s most arid regions are facing an increasingly serious water crisis, and local water policies often aggravate the problem. In such climates, growth in the agricultural sector has come with high environmental costs.

With the help of new technologies that measure real water consumption in agriculture, governments are designing innovative water rights systems that actually save water. Based on results from two successful pilots, the World Bank Group is partnering with China to tap into science to transform water management in agriculture at the national level.

This year International Day for Biodiversity (May 22) is focused on “Water and Biodiversity” to coincide with the United Nations declaration of 2013 as the International Year for Water Cooperation. Effective water management has traditionally been viewed as an important factor in maintaining biodiversity in ecosystems. The opposite is increasingly viewed as critical: biodiversity can provide the basis for effective water management.